Feedback, Stuff that jumps out...

[Kondrikthus]

Is it alright if I have a running opinion-forum about different things in the novel? Mostly for critique/feedback purposes, if that's okay.

For now I just want to say that the lighting on 22 is superb (great job making it look like firelight), and the girl's face in the bottom left panel is priceless.

[Kondrikthus]

There is one thing on 22 that looks a tad off: In the lower right panel (where she says that "there's a weird man at the door") the little girl's left eye (her left, not mine) appears to be angled more steeply than the rest of the face.

[Aeolian]

Thank you for your feedback, Kondrikthus. I've been practicing my light and shade tecniques, but Photoshop has been quite unruly.

I'll get to fixing her eye, thanks for pointing it out.

[Kondrikthus]

Page 24: The new style looks great. I hope it will prove easier for you.

In the first panel were you intending to make the hands so large? It looks odd, especially on Kabaal. Perhaps lengthen his arm and shrink his hand a bit.

[Aeolian]

I'm trying to do something a little artsy with hands since they've been so bland lately, but perhaps I should try something more realistic. I'm still not great with hands anyway. I'll be working on it. Thanks for the feedback!

[Kondrikthus]

New Page! Huzzah for number 25.

Hand-done? As in scanned-into-the-computer-after-being-drawn-literally-by-hand hand-done? Nice!

I noticed the perspective is a little off, mostly for the bench in the first panel. remember to check your horizon lines and focus point. Also, the profiles for the characters looked a tad odd. I'm not sure exactly how, but they were... Off. Taller, maybe? Stretched? "Like butter scraped over too much bread," perhaps? I don't know.

The coloring and lighting for the fireplace is great. I would be extremely impressed if that were hand-done as well. Heck, I would still be impressed if it were photoshop. :P

I like the designs on the rug and tapestries, though a little more color might be nice.

Oh, and I've determined that everyone in this panel is a Vampire. The furniture too. All Vampires. Why, do you ask? They cast no shadows. The floor is shadowless. Big blazing fire, but no shadows. Kaikuro is in the Vampires' lair. Nice twist. :P

All joking aside, not bad at all for your first interior. I look forward to seeing many improvements as the novel progresses.

[Aeolian]

The inking and lineart is hand-drawn and scanned in and it is colored in photoshop. I did it this way because I already tried to do the same thing with photoshop inking and the perspective looked *far* worse.

ARGH I forgot about the shadows >.< Thanks for bringing that to my attention... I'll most definitely remember that for the next page.

Yes, the profiles are a little stretched, now that you mention it, I do notice how that is off. I'll work more next time and hopefully I can make this art a little less problematic.

[Flurrin]

I have noticed when reading it over again (I can't get over how beautifully done it is!), only some of the pages have links in the picture than will take you to the next page, while the rest (mainly the newer ones) do not.

I love the art style for this. Don't ever change it! :)

~Flurrin

[Aeolian]

Thanks for your thoughts, Flurrin. I dont plan on completely changing the artstyle, but I do plan on refining it somehow. I'm not completely happy with it myself, but I'm glad you are.

Yes, some pages have links to the next page and some don't- that's a problem on my part. I'll fix that as soon as I can. It's mainly just a convenience thing for the reader, but I never use that feature when i go through it.

[Kondrikthus]

Alright, so I have some ground to cover...

26 - Introducing Koraar.

The art looks sketchy, and the colors blurry. I think more definition is needed.

27 - The switching hands.

I like the art, but the panels completely lose their meaning the way that you drew them. It looks awkward, but not in the way you want it to. I would recommend scrapping the page (not the style. The style you drew it in was good) and starting over. You can still use that idea of the mismatched handshake, but you need to change the camera perspectives to show exactly what's going on. The focus is the hands, so keep them as the focus. The way you have it right now it looks like Koraar stops to do a dance before taking Kaikuro's hand.

I'll be back in an hour to look over the next two pages.

[Aeolian]

@ 27: Yeeeeah, I know. I was just under a ferocious deadline. I'll definitely redo that page when I can... also still needing to add more pages in the beginning too.

[Kondrikthus]

Okay, moving on to 28 - Weapons check.

Well drawn, although the coloring in the second frame looks a little sloppy. Also, I'm not sure if this is intentional, but in both of the frames showing Koraars eyes his left eye looks off in relation to the right. It's particularly noticeable in the top frame. He might be raising an eyebrow slightly, but his eye souldn't be moving that much. Come to think of it, it looks like you had two camera shots from slightly different angles (one on his right and one on his left) and you pasted them together at his nose. It just looks a little odd. On the lower picture of Koraar the eyes are different sizes. Not that big a deal.

And 29 - Sit With Me.

I like what you've done with this one. If this is the style you've settled on, it looks great. A couple of flaws...

Kaikuro appears to be wearing a wig. Why? It seems that no matter how far Kaikuro turns his head, the part of his hair remains stagnant. We have on this page head-on, three-quarter, and profile shots, yet Kaikuro's hair is always facing the audience like a good stage actor. Kind of weird.

I notice that you've been doing this on a lot of your pages: As the character shifts from a head-on shot to a profile shot, their cranium gets bigger and their jaw-line changes shape. On this page it's particularly apparent with Kaikuro and Kaara. Perhaps work on consistency between the different angles (not that I can say much. I suck at doing that sort of thing).

While all of the other characters are fine in this regard, in the first frame Koraar needs some more definition. He looks a tad out of place, as if you didn't ink him. Just darken the edge lines a bit, methinks.

Alright, that's all of the ripping I have for you. Nitpicky detail-stuff. I really like what's developing, and I look forward to the next page!

[Aeolian]

Yeah, I'm aware of the problematic eye situation with Koraar. On page 29 he looks out of place because of the inking job, I think I was trying to be a bit too thin with him. I'll see if I can transform the inks and make them more apparent. Also, I do no pasting/cutting or any violence in the comic, all the inks are done freehand with very little transforming involved. In the first frame they look off because he has his head tilted at an angle... but they probably look a bit off because of that, so I might just rotate that frame.

I love your critiques because you make them in a way where I can laugh while blushing. They're ridiculously hilarious. They kind of hurt too, but, in a funny way. The wig/stage actor comment hit me pretty hard... with laughter. XP My my my. I had no idea until you mentioned it, too. >.< It's like one of those sprites from "Doom". No matter what angle you look at it, the same side is always facing you. >.<

As for the turning of angles... Yeah. I suck at it. But it has to be done, otherwise my comic would be incredibly boring to read, with the same-angle shots all the time. Oh well. It is my intention to just focus on getting a little better with each page. I need to take this particularily slowly because of stuff in my life, so I can't really make a huge art commitment to sit down and fix a ton of crappy problems immediately.

[Kondrikthus]

Alright! What page is this... Oh, wait. I don't know what page it is because the page numbers have disappeared! Okay, I'll count the pages... Oh, the "next" button on the page-before-it-which-also-doesn't-have-a-number isn't working. Darn. I guess I'll just have to go with "Mystery Page!"

Okay, so for "Mystery Page" (30) we have only a couple of minor issues:

- I agree with you that switching some panels around might be a good idea. Having Kaikuro say "Hi..." twice is perhaps a little redundant, and it's kind of awkwardly scripted. I think a good switch would be to have Kaikuro sit, Koraar introduce his wife, and then Saanya can talk about Kaikuro's workout, or whatever he was doing with Kaabel that morning (hey, it's been awhile since that page. I can make up stuff now, right? :P). It would probably be best to eliminate the first panel altogether, and save the picture for some time later in the conversation when you get really tired of trying to figure out different angles to show Kaikuro in (you know it's going to happen...).

- Kaikuro looks really short in the third frame, and a little out of place based on where Koraar and Saanya are looking (their sightlines meet just over Kaikuro's head). Place him just a little higher in the panel and the problem will disappear. Also, tiny lighting incongruence between the first and fifth frames. It's practically the same angle, so keep the shadow on the brown cloak consistent.

- I see that Koraar has discovered the miracle of anti-aging hair-dye: his hair is more blond on this page, to the point where it jumped out a bit. But then, I guess that's how he's able to keep such a hot wife around (she's Kaabel's mother?!)...

- Minor incosistencies: Kaabel's sleeves lack the slit and gold-button-thing seen in the earlier pages. His face looks different also: he looks a little older, and his jaw has gotten a bit more boxy.

Other than that, this page is really good! The artwork itself is consistent throughout, and it integrates very well! I like the styling, and the methods for highlighting and shading which you've selected. Have you noticed that my critiques have gotten much more specific and knit-picky recently? You're doing great!

[Aeolian]

I've taken off the page numbers because I don't have room anymore. To figure out what page it's on just click "archive". :/

By the way I drew it (showing the longer panel there) and how it was angled, I found it extremely difficult to switch it around. But I'll definitely do that in the future when I redo Chapter 1 (it's definiately going to have to happen.)

Kaikuro looks short because I had him leaning forward. But maybe it was a bit too drastic.

As far as the parents' ages, they're in their late 40s. They probably don't look it at all though. >.< I tried to make them appear aged, adding mild wrinkles around the nose and eyes, but, maybe I need to do that a bit more as well as adding a bit more gray in the hair.

As far as Kaabel goes. yeah, I noticed that too late. I need to work more on finalizing his outfit- it was a spur of the moment thing I did and it's one of his many outfit designs I have for him, so... I fail.

Anyway, I'm glad I'm getting the art more consistent- that's been what I've been working hardest on lately.